adrenal androgens linked to premenopausal breast cancer risk
 

These are related to testosterone and, ladies, yes, they are secreted by the adrenal gland in women:

Adrenal androgens linked to premenopausal breast cancer risk
Plasma concentrations of adrenal steroid hormones alter the risk of breast cancer development in premenopausal women, study findings suggest.

"Concentrations of adrenal androgens are positively associated with postmenopausal breast cancer risk; however, results in premenopausal women are conflicting," Shelley Tworoger (Channing Laboratory, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) and co-workers explain.

To clarify the role of adrenal androgens in younger women, the team examined participants of the Nurses' Health Study II to determine the relationship between dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and DHEA sulfate (DHEAS) levels and breast cancer.

Blood samples were taken from 317 women diagnosed with breast cancer and each matched to two women without the disease by age, fasting status, and time of day and month of blood collection.

As reported in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, the researchers failed to find a correlation between blood DHEA or DHEAS concentrations and overall risk of in situ or invasive breast cancer.

However, both DHEA and DHEAS showed a positive association with risk of estrogen receptor-positive and progesterone receptor-positive breast tumors, with respective relative risks (RRs) of 1.6 and 1.9 for women in the top versus bottom quartiles for the androgens.

In addition, there was a significant correlation between age and, with a RR for increased DHEAS levels of 0.8 for women aged less than 45 years versus 2.0 for older participants. A similar relationship was also identified for DHEA, the team observes.

"Our results suggest that adrenal androgens are positively associated with breast cancer among predominately premenopausal women, especially for estrogen receptor-positive/progesterone receptor-positive tumors and among women over age 45 years," Tworoger et al conclude.



Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prevent 2006; 15: 967–971

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/con...tract/15/5/967
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